This constitutes a shocking truth in Shotgun Players’ “The Village Bike,” but that’s not even the worst part of Penelope Skinner’s script. From start to finish, this sexist melodrama is steeped in tropes that went out of theatrical fashion more than a century ago, though it takes place in the present day. The show is unworthy of Shotgun Players, the company that, in 2015, produced an entire season of plays by women in an effort to do their part (which is much, much more than most companies do) to help correct contemporary American theater’s insidious and persistent preference for plays by men.

A selection of some of the play’s worst retrograde moments as it chronicles the troubled marriage of Becky (Elissa Stebbins) and John (Nick Medina), who are recent transplants to their English village: John “rescued” Becky from poverty by marrying her. John gets to mansplain to Becky how she’s feeling — he’s read books about pregnancy, so he’s an expert — and volunteer his wife to babysit for their neighbor Jenny (El Beh). Yet Becky is told she’s “lucky” — because not only is her husband interested in her enough to stick around, he also cooks and washes dishes sometimes.

Also, Becky is unfit to judge whether the secondhand bike she wants to buy is in decent shape. That’s a man’s job. It’s not that she’s unintelligent; we’re told she’s an English teacher.

But it’s telling that the show is set during summer holiday, so that it looks like she never contributes anything to the world: A cosseted woman of privilege, she spends most of the play in the kitchen, barefoot in a negligee-revealing bathrobe, watching porn (some of it set in the 18th century, where the play itself might as well be set) in thrall to her libido, which is all really inconvenient to John’s vision of her pregnancy — as a celibate one.

“I don’t want to kill the baby,” he says, evidently concerned that his penis is so long as to pioneer new anatomical frontiers.

There’s more. The vagina is referred to as both “down there” and a “thingamadoodle.” A wife suffers from “hysteria.” It’s suggested that it’s normal to beat pregnant women. Oliver, who sells Becky the bike and becomes her lover, says things like, “Should be illegal if you ask me, fat old women in bikinis,” or “The less you say, the better.”

Worst of all, the gods of this play’s universe rule that Becky must be physically punished for her sexual appetites and marital deviance, so they mete out grievous injury — which restores equilibrium to the marriage. In other words, through bodily harm, Becky is made to see that her husband was right all along.

The actors are mostly fine, but it doesn’t matter. The only responsible way to perform “The Village Bike” would be as camp or satire, but director Patrick Dooley never takes a critical point of view toward the play’s norms. You’re allowed to feel that Oliver is a slimeball, but you’re never encouraged to question his relative impunity. The direction only buttresses Oliver’s belief that Becky deserves any punishment she gets.

If you were feeling charitable, you might hazard that Shotgun feels it is challenging the antediluvian values “The Village Bike” puts forth. But word to the wise, theater companies: If you’re considering a script that features a spate of lines like “Open your legs, bitch,” there’s probably so much sexism inherent in the story that even the most clever direction will struggle to take a fully critical view of it. And it’s worth asking yourselves: Why do you want to produce this show — really?